All Points West – The East Coast’s Coachella
All Points West is in its second year as the ‘East Coast Coachella.’ Except that it isn’t. It does, however, share a promoter, installation art that peppers Indio’s polo grounds at Coachella, and boasts some of the same musical acts. 100 degrees and dry in April is not, sadly, the same as 80 degrees and humid with UNBELIEVABLE THUNDERSTORMS.
Let’s focus on the good things, shall we?
(not that I nearly lost my mind trying to get Zac’s photos to correctly upload and accompany this piece…)
The good things happened on Friday, which was All Points West year two, day one. The good times began with Heartless Bastards, who are neither of those things, as I learned later as I ‘interviewed’ them (and by interview, I mean, chatted about a few things casually). My partner in crime, and photographer for this piece, Zac Walker, lost his festival virginity, and I was his corrupter. And it was great.
Heartless Bastards kicked the day off with cuts off of their recent release, “The Mountain.” They rocked and they rolled. The crowd started to pour in throughout their set, which set up a lovely rest of the day.
From there, Zac and I wandered. We watched final touches being put on (rad) installation artwork by harried artists (or their interns?). We checked out Swedish fashion house H&M’s sponsor-cube, resplendently crisp with hot girls milling about wearing white, and dispensing water out of beer taps. Something to file under: Things I Never Thought I’d See At A Festival Or Anywhere, Tap Water Out Of A Beer Tap. Thanks, Hit Or Miss! I wish you were selling sundresses.
The Renegade Craft Fair of Brooklyn, however, had a generous supply of clothing merchants, selling dresses, lacy underthings, hipster-baby-organic-cotton-onesies, art print dresses and jewelry. It was a welcomed alternative to the typical festival tie-dyed clothing booths I’ve seen elsewhere.
We headed over to the main stage for Fleet Foxes. I quite possibly lived under a rock for most of last year…that, or my friends severely dropped the ball and didn’t tell me about the band and their beautiful album, and how it’s a must. I found out as soon as they started. As they began, the rain began, in perfect synchronicity; light and lovely. To distill the aesthetic down to a sentence, Fleet Foxes are bunch of bearded dudes who harmonize. It’s something to experience; it is both mellow and alarming. If you’re a nerd for pretty vocals, this is your new jam.
By the end of their set, the rain had turned into a downpour. Zac and I needed port-a-potties, the most expensive slices of pizza on earth, beer contained in a ‘garden,’ (c’mon New Jersey, why the lame rules?) and ponchos. After the sky opened and we were poured upon, we embraced the mud puddles and risk of death by lightning and danced like crazy people to Vampire Weekend.
Vampire Weekend’s set was a bit touch and go at times with the sheer volume of water and wind blowing the water onto the stage. They plugged along, plugged in, voltage flowing, and made it through a full set. We heard their debut album in its entirety and one or two new songs. The mud puddles were deep and the dancing went on. There were a few moments when frontman Ezra Koenig looked terrified (rightfully so) by the weather. He confirmed his terror during the introduction to the last song. I couldn’t write down what he said without destroying my notebook, but it was something about possible electrocution, and a tenacious crowd who had stuck around to see them.
By the time the set finished, the sky closed. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound was full and fun. Zac described, very rightly I might add, that Karen O looks like she sleeps in a coffin all day long, and when it is time for her to perform, someone knocks on her coffin door to awake her, she throws on red lipstick, and away she goes. Gigantic white plastic balls with huge glittery eyeballs affixed to them floated from backstage out into the crowd, matching the eyeball backdrop, which was their set piece. While I’m not necessarily a fan of the band, they did play a compelling set of new songs and old fan favorites. Karen O definitely knows how to work a crowd be it by manipulating emotions through a crazy black and white cape or how she delivers a lyric. She gives it her all.
If someone would have told me years ago when I attended my first of many large-scale music festivals, that Jay-Z would go down in my history as one of the best festival headliners I’d ever seen…I don’t know that I would have believed them. After reading about Jay-Z’s triumphant performance at 2008’s Glastonbury Festival in the UK, in which he opened his set with a cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” complete with his playing guitar, (True to form, Noel Gallagher had smugly remarked that ‘Glastonbury has the tradition of guitar music…I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury, it’s wrong…’) and afterwards stated that he’s “got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” !!! I mean, anything after that can seem like gravy? I was always on the Blur side of the Manchester rivalry, anyways.
While I’m not NOT a fan of Hova, (I think The Black Album is brilliant, and am familiar with his charting singles) I could not imagine a SHOW being as good as it was. The man performs with fellow rapper, Memphis Bleek , dudes on turntables and a full band, including a horns section. He brings in the noise and brings in the funk.
All Points West marked Jay-Z’s U.S. festival debut. He began his evening with neon clock, counting down from ten minutes to 00 seconds, when he took the stage. Hype-y? Yes. But also effective in getting the crowd psyched. He began with a fitting cover of Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Till Brooklyn” complete with pictures of the Bedford-Stuyvesant housing project and neighborhood where he grew up, and sprinkled-in samples of Beasties tracks. It was a lovely tribute to MCA, a.k.a. Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, who instead of headlining All Points West, was undergoing surgery and treatment for cancer of the salivary gland, which caused them to cancel their summer tour plans. The crowd reaction to Jay-Z’s cover-choice was to dance, fist pump, and sing along. It was a bitchin’ start to a bitchin’ set, one that hit every track you’d imagine he’d play, and lesser-known songs that only the uber-fan would know. There was a section about Obama, playing “My President Is Black” freestyle talk of the First Family, and pictures of the inauguration and newspapers’ front pages as a backdrop. Things got a bit serious when the band sampled the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” and Jay told the crowd that “..if you take anything from this evening, take that we are not here to mourn death but to celebrate life,” and proceeded to call Michael Jackson ‘the greatest entertainer ever to live.”
The terminally hip kids who were all over the indie bands of earlier, unabashedly put their hands in diamonds (I guess that’s what you do for Shawn Carter? OK, cool, good to know) and were totally into it. I think that is why festivals are so special; a promoter can present a mixed-bag of talent spanning genre and, at times, generations. To speak generally, the people who attend may take something from all of it, and are open to more than just one or two bands they specifically went to see.
Oh, and Jay-Z rocks. Period.
